Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Create workshops that truly nourish, inspire, and transform—while feeling grounded, confident, and prepared as a facilitator.
If you feel called to bring women together in meaningful ways—but aren't sure how to design, lead, and sustain powerful group experiences—The Art of Creating Workshops for Women offers a clear, supportive path forward.
Drawing on nearly four decades of experience, Marlene Schiwy shares how to create workshops and retreats that are not only well-organized, but deeply resonant—spaces where creativity, connection, and personal growth can unfold naturally.
What You'll Gain
- The confidence to design and lead workshops with clarity and purpose
- Practical frameworks for creating safe, supportive, and engaging group spaces
- Tools for guiding creativity, reflection, and meaningful participation
- Strategies for handling group dynamics and challenging situations with care
- A complete understanding of how to plan, deliver, and evolve your offerings
Rather than offering generic facilitation advice, this guide focuses specifically on creating spaces for women—where emotional depth, creativity, and community are central.
From Idea to Fully Realized Workshop
This book walks you through the entire process of creating and facilitating workshops and retreats, including:
- Shaping a compelling vision and structure for your offering
- Planning logistics, pricing, and promotion with confidence
- Preparing yourself as a facilitator—emotionally, creatively, and practically
- Holding space through deep listening, presence, and responsiveness
- Reflecting, refining, and growing your work over time
If you're looking for practical ways to turn your ideas into meaningful gatherings, this guide provides grounded, experience-based support at every stage.
Facilitation that Honors Depth and Connection
Rather than focusing only on techniques, The Art of Creating Workshops for Women emphasizes the inner and relational aspects of facilitation:
- Creating environments where participants feel seen, heard, and supported
- Encouraging creative expression through writing, movement, ritual, and art
- Navigating vulnerability and emotional depth with sensitivity
- Building community-centered experiences rooted in trust and authenticity
This is especially helpful for facilitators who want to move beyond surface-level teaching and create spaces that truly matter.
Who This Book Is For
- Women who want to lead workshops, retreats, or group programs
- Facilitators, coaches, therapists, and educators working with women
- Creative practitioners in writing, wellness, or personal growth fields
- Beginners seeking a clear, step-by-step path to facilitation
- Experienced leaders looking to deepen the emotional and relational quality of their work
Guidance from a Seasoned Facilitator
Marlene Schiwy has spent nearly four decades facilitating workshops and retreats for women internationally, integrating her background in literature, psychology, and group process.
Her work blends practical structure with deep attention to creativity, embodiment, and emotional awareness—offering a rare combination of skill and insight.
A Meaningful Way to Bring Women Together
In a time when many are seeking connection, creativity, and purpose, well-held group spaces are more important than ever.
This book offers a grounded, encouraging path—helping you create workshops that support both individual expression and collective growth.
Sometimes you encounter that rare book that you know has arisen from a lifetime of thought, care, and personal experience. This is one of those! As a workshop leader for more than thirty-five years, I know that Marlene Schiwy's advice rings true. Even if you're just contemplating running a workshop, this guide is for you!
—Eric Maisel, Brave New Mind and 60+ books
Practical, thoughtful, and soulful—Marlene weaves all three dimensions in this beautiful book. With open-handed generosity she speaks with the wise voice of Athena, mentoring us in imagining every step of the workshop creation process—from dreaming to crystallizing, planning, preparing, and leaping into facilitating spaces for others.
—Safron Rossi, PhD, professor and author, The Kore Goddess
Marlene Schiwy's book informs and provides sage, specific counsel on how to create workshops for women to promote personal growth through shared insight and support. In addition, her practical roadmap for workshops gestates community and overcomes the isolation so many women feel from their own generative souls. Out of this private and communal work, a rejuvenation of insight, courage, and determination may well rise for many.
—James Hollis, PhD, Jungian Analyst, educator, and author of many books
I wish this book had been around when I began facilitating women's groups in the 1980s! It covers everything from first ideas, creating content and planning to managing feedback, boundaries, and burnout—with warmth, authenticity, and passion. Packed with practical templates for workshops of any length, Marlene Schiwy's book is an indispensable guide for facilitators of soulful groups. Nothing is missing.
—Gerry O'Sullivan, O'Sullivan Solutions, author, The Mediator's Toolkit
With wisdom and generosity, and in her clear and elegant voice, Marlene Schiwy offers would-be workshop leaders a vision of the workshop itself as a work of art, a created thing—imagined, designed, assembled, curated, and finally lived into. She offers resources both practical and spiritual, along with invitations to adapt her exercises and templates for the greater aim of creating more soulful spaces for women. Intimate and empowering, this handbook is an invaluable gift to future guides.
—Sheri Reynolds, author, The Rapture of Canaan (an Oprah's Book Club Selection & New York Times bestseller) and The Tender Grave
The Art of Creating Workshops for Women is an essential book for anyone who is thinking about creating workshops for women or is new to doing them, while also a useful reference for experienced workshop creators and presenters. Schiwy's approach is steeped in feminist ideas, including a need to reclaim the power and importance of women's creativity and voices, a need that is particularly resonant today when women's rights are under attack and women's commitments to nurturing, care, and service are so often labeled as weak.
—Marlene G. Fine, PhD, Professor Emerita, Simmons University, and co-author, Let's Talk Race
Marlene Schiwy, a seasoned workshop leader, offers a practical guide for what she terms "hand-crafted workshops" for women. She blends a nuts-and-bolts approach to every step of the workshop process with her personal, soulful approach.
—Fern L. Johnson, PhD Professor Emerita of English and Senior Research Scholar, Clark University, and co-author, Let's Talk Race
I've had the privilege of participating in Marlene's workshops, and they have been precious. The depth, authenticity, and care she brings to the gatherings she leads is rare. For her to distill the wisdom of four decades of transformative work and share it so generously is a gift to all who wish to create spaces that nurture depth and imagination.
—Daniela Sieff, author, Understanding and Healing Emotional Trauma
Marlene Schiwy has been facilitating workshops and retreats for women internationally for almost four decades. After completing her doctorate in literature at the University of London, she spent a decade teaching at City University in New York, where she also completed a year-long Gestalt training course in group process. Marlene was a faculty member at the University of British Columbia's Writing Centre where, among many other offerings, she taught Body Soul Writing, the first university course in Canada to combine writing and movement. After completing a three-year Body Soul Rhythms Leadership Training Program with Marion Woodman, Marlene did extensive postgraduate study at ISAP (the International School for Analytical Psychology) in Zurich. The author of A Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal Writing Journey and Simple Days: A Journal on What Really Matters, Marlene lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Preface
Introduction
Part I: Before the Workshop
Chapter 1: So You Want to Offer Workshops for Women
Chapter 2: Practical and logistical issues
Chapter 3: Registration
Chapter 4: The Nuts and Bolts of Preparation
Chapter 5: Preparing Different Kinds of Workshops
Part II: Creating Workshop Content
Chapter 6: Creating Content for Writing Workshops
Chapter 7: Other Content Areas
Part III: During the Workshop
Chapter 8: Inward and Downward
Chapter 9: The Facilitator's Role
Chapter 10: Trouble Shooting
Chapter 11: Additional Considerations
Part IV: After the Workshop
Chapter 12: What Comes Next
Chapter 13: Taking the Long View, Looking Ahead
Postlude
Appendix – Templates
Works Cited
Additional Resources
Acknowledgements